Swept Off Her Feet
by Starclipper01
Summary: This is my interpretation of what happened at Alaska Base during Dolza's Rain of Death.This is my very first fanfic. Please R & R. Thanks!


_This is my first fanfic. The story is my interpretation of what happened to Lisa and Rick at Alaska Base during and immediately after Dolza's Rain of Death wiped out most of Earth's population. It's not faithful to the canon but what the heck! _

_I wish I owned Robotech but alas fate prevented. Thus, Harmony Gold owns everything!_

Swept Off Her Feet

"SDF-1, can you read me? Claudia, Sammie, anybody! I'm hit and going down towards Earth!" Rick frantically tried to regain control of his VT. Overhead, above his cockpit, balls of explosions, streaks of laser beams, and the glare from corkscrewing missiles seeking targets provided a macabre lightshow of death and destruction as Supreme Commander Dolza and his fleet of 4 million Zentraedi ships poured death and destruction upon Earth and its defenders.

"Lisa, I don't know how much longer Alaska Base can hold out." Lisa looked at her father, Admiral Donald Hayes, with a mixture of sadness and despair, on the screen built into her duty console. She hated how their relationship how ended up when she sided with Captain Henry Gloval, commander of the SDF-1, rather than with her father and the others on the United Earth Defense Council. "The Grand Cannon, according to the damage control monitors, may have one shot left. But, in order to fire it, it means going down to the auxiliary weapons station, but the feedback from the shot will destroy the station."

Lisa felt a chill settle over her body when she heard him. She knew what he was planning to do. "No!" she exclaimed. "Father, that's suicide! You'll die!"

Admiral Hayes laughed humorlessly, "That's obvious, honey. But I don't think we have any choice. If we have even a slim chance of defeating those alien freaks, well…we have to do what have to do."

Lisa was about to reply when the base was jolted by several direct hits. She grabbed onto her console to ride out the shockwaves. The picture on her screen flickered with static as it tried to keep its connection to her father up. "Father, are you still there?" She desperately wanted to change his mind. As the last shockwave dissipated, she blindly reached out to grab her chair which, miraculously stayed upright through the bombardment, and sat down. She was so intent on regaining communications with her father that she tuned out the moans of the dying that were in the same room as her. "If you can hear me, don't go down there! It's not worth it!" she cried out in anguish. _So much death and destruction, she raged. Everyone I love and care for are dead or soon will be._ Unbidden and out of nowhere, the face of a single VT pilot, Rick Hunter, floated in front of her face. Then as quickly as he appeared, he disappeared as she was brought crashing back to reality by the static-distorted voice of her father.

"Lisa, honey, I have to go now. I just wanted to say…" Lisa saw and heard her father try to tell her something, but in the background, behind him, there was a loud explosion and smoke than her communication screen blacked out. "Father! Father!" Lisa desperately pushed various buttons, flipped toggle switches, and turned dials in a vain attempt to regain contact with him.

Unknown to her, the pilot that she included among those that she love and care for, Rick Hunter, was frantically running out of ways to keep his VT stabilized and its nose up so that the plane's fuselage will shield him from the heat of re-entry and give him a chance to make it down to the surface alive and in one piece.

His fly-by-wire avionics package was behaving like it had a split personality; one instant it would be working perfectly, in the next instant, every alarm in Rick's cockpit would light up or shrieked out to get his attention. All of it was due to that one shot from a Zentraedi battlepod. He smiled mirthlessly as he recalled that he killed it and the pilot flying it but only after the enemy already inflicted the possibly fatal damage to him. He wondered if that dead Zentraedi pilot would get the last laugh.

_Think, Hunter. There's a way to get out of this. So, think!_ Rick ordered to himself, getting back to the business of survival. Suddenly, a light bulb went off! It was a long shot but everything he did so far was by the tech manual. Now, it was time to throw the book away and try something crazy.

Rick quickly shut off the fusion drives that powered his Veritech and temporarily switched to backup battery power. Next, he activated his nose-mounted thrusters to slow his forward momentum as much as possible. It was working but was agonizingly slow.

After several minutes, in which Rick would say later that shaved several years off his life, Skull One finally slowed its forward momentum as much as possible. One problem solved, he mentally sighed in relief.

Next on his agenda was getting the nose up. To do that, he decided to reboot his avionics. Rick knew that doing this in the middle of the greatest battle known to humankind was insane. He understood the risks that would leave him deaf and blind when the threat receivers and communications are gone. Still, he had no choice. Displaying the qualities that would someday make him a great leader in the future, he made a calculated risk and went ahead and turned off the avionics that controlled his fighter.

Suddenly, there was silence surrounding Rick. No radio chatter in the background, Minmei singing "We Will Win" fading to nothingness, even the sounds that a VT makes were nonexistent. For just a moment, there was peace and not a hint that Apocalypse was going on outside the world Rick inhabited inside his VT.

"Lisa, honey, I have to go now. I just wanted to say…" _I love you_ was what Donald Hayes wanted to say to his beautiful daughter before the end. But a large explosion interrupted him and smoke was pouring out from the damaged secondary consoles where the explosion occur cutting off all communications to the rest of Alaska Base.

The shockwave from the explosion stunned him and left him wondering if he suffered a mild concussion. But with an effort he didn't felt, he forced himself to gather his wits. Looking madly about, he saw his aide-de-camp haul himself up from the floor where he fell when the explosion went off. Everyone else in the control room was dead. "Edwards, all you hurt?" Hayes shouted to him while he frantically tried to restore any type of link to Lisa. He wanted to say all is forgiven and that he was so proud of her. But, after futilely trying to raise Lisa over every A/V channel he can remember, it was not meant to be, he bleakly thought.

He glanced over to see Colonel T.R. Edwards slowly shuffle over to where he was. Blood was pouring out from his nose and ears. _Blast effects from the explosion_, Hayes distractedly noted. He'd seen enough of those during the Global Civil War.

Edwards looked at Hayes with a glazed look. "Sir, we have to get out of here. If we don't soon, we're all going to die down here." Edwards was gasping from the smoke. Hayes tried not to cough. The ventilation system was dead. Pretty soon we'll join it, Edwards thought. _Not if I can help it._

Hayes set his jaw and gave Edwards a piercing look. He was disappointed in his aide. "Colonel, we have our duty to perform and that duty is to kill the aliens." With a shake of his head, Hayes indicated to Edwards to follow him down to the auxiliary weapons station.

Edwards balked at following the Admiral. "You've gotta be kidding me! Are you insane? I'm not going to die for a futile gesture! We got to get out of here!" He went to grab Hayes arm and tried to drag him to one of the escape pods. Hayes roughly shook off Edwards' arm and roared at him.

"Edwards, don't you dare desert your post! You will do your duty and live up to your oath! Do you hear me!" In other circumstances, Hayes would not have done what he did now. He drew his Individual Defense Weapon and had it aimed at Edwards.

T.R. Edwards stood where he was and saw that Hayes was livid with rage. He was surprised at how Hayes reacted to his suggestion of escaping the doomed Alaska Base. He noticed that Hayes' right hand which held the laser pistol was shaking. The former mercenary pilot who slayed for pay back before the SDF-1 appeared out of nowhere was frantically thinking of a way to calm Hayes down while he reached for his holdout pistol hidden inside his uniform jacket. Edwards now regretted bitterly on passing up several chances to buy a derringer. He could've used it now.

Edwards mentally smiled as he realized how he can get out of this situation. He slouched his shoulders and put his arms up in front of him as if shamed by the morally superior officer before him and meekly told Hayes, "I'm sorry, Admiral, I don't know what got into me." Surreptitiously, he moved his right hand closer to the opening of his jacket. He kept his eyes focused on Hayes waiting for the pistol to be lowered.

Admiral Hayes sighed in relief. Some of the stress he was under disappeared. The last thing he wanted was dealing with a mutinous coward. _I'm glad I talked some sense into Edwards_.

He lowered his pistol as he felt his rage ebbed.

_Now_, Edwards observed as he saw Hayes lowered his IDW. His right hand quickly went into the jacket's opening and he felt the smooth grip of his holdout pistol. He pulled it out or tried to. What this former fighter pilot failed to do was to practice drawing the holdout pistol in order to avoid any mistake. He made a mistake.

Donald Hayes, for all the mistakes that future historians will blame him for, didn't make a mistake when it came to using handguns. Hayes, unlike Edwards, rose through the ranks as a naval commando, first with the old US Navy SEALs, then later with the RDF Special Combat Task Force. His body automatically went into a shooting stance and he instinctively fired his pistol. But, perhaps due to fate, he didn't kill Edwards. As he went into his firing stance, his right foot stepped on a blood puddle which came from the dead personnel in the main control room. Hayes slipped and his shot went off target and, rather than aiming for the ex-mercenary's heart, the beam hit the left side of Edwards face just above the cheekbone.

T.R. Edwards, formerly of the ant-Internationalist forces during the Global Civil War and currently senior staff officer on Admiral Hayes staff, tried frantically to pull his pistol out of his jacket but it was caught in a fold from his sleeve. Cursing the admiral as well as simultaneously begging Hayes not to fire, he felt the left side of his face melting. He could smell the stench of burnt meat and sickenly realized that it was his own flesh.

Then the pain hit him. He screamed out and, forgetting the pistol, reached up with both hands to try to end the pulsating agony that was emanating from his face. His legs gave out and he crumpled to the ground. Sounds of agony were coming from the cowardly ex-pilot. Edwards was barely clinging to consciousness. Then he heard footsteps approaching…

Lisa sat sprawled in front of her console. She was crying. For her lost father, for her friends, and for her world. After she lost contact with her father, out of her innate sense of compassion, as well as her sense of duty, she checked on the rest of her unit that were in the communications room with her. They were all dead. Tragically, she was the only survivor.

She wanted to give in and just curl up into a fetal position waiting for all of this to end. Random thoughts kept popping up inside her mind. There was Captain Gloval welcoming her aboard the SDF-1 as she reported for duty as First Officer, Claudia and her going into Macross City for a night on the town, Karl Riber waving goodbye as he shipped out for Mars, her mother slowly dying of breast cancer, Minmei and Rick walking together oblivious to everyone and everything about them. But something inside of her rebelled at this last thought. Lisa shied away from examining too deeply why Rick and Minmei being together bothered her so much.

Pulling herself back from the depression that was trying to envelop her, Lisa set about to making contact with any others that might have survived the Zentraedi's Rain of Death. "Attention, any Alaska Base personnel, this is Commander Lisa Hayes, can anyone hear me?" She pressed her headset closer and was cycling through all the surviving audio and video channels on her console hoping for someone to hear or see her.

After savoring the solitude that came from shutting down his VT, Rick exhaled heavily and squaring his shoulders, put his right forefinger on the main power switch. _Here goes nothing_ as he flipped the switch to on.

Rick's heart stopped as none of the equipment initially came on. Then, to his immense satisfaction, one by one, all of the cockpits instruments came to life. He waited for any red lights to come on or loud warning tones to blare out calling for his attention but none of them came on. All the instruments were finally working as they were designed. Rick leaned back in his ejector seat and closed his eyes and heaved a big sigh of relief. Now, he can concentrate on landing his fighter safely on the ground. Switching to an emergency channel Rick tried to reach anyone on the ground. "This is Skull Leader from the SDF-1. Can anyone hear me?"

The footsteps came closer. Finally, they stopped by Edwards's head. He was barely aware of them stopping through the waves of agony coming from the left side of his face. Without warning, someone grabbed him by his hair. Opening his eyes, Edwards was puzzled why he can only see out of his right eye, when he heard Admiral Hayes's voice.

"You coward," Hayes stated flatly, coldly looking at him. "First, you tried to desert your post under fire. Under fire, you miserable son of a bitch! With the exception of you, everyone else here carried out their duties to the end." Edwards saw Hayes swallow, then with his voice catching, "Including my Lisa."

The Admiral then dropped Edwards's head. This inflicted another wave of nausea and misery upon Edwards. He struggled, but ultimately, failed to prevent himself from throwing up. After the vomiting stopped, Edwards sensed the acrid taste of bile and this morning's breakfast.

Hayes stopped talking as he coldly stared down at Edwards vomiting. He moved around his former aide to avoid the mess that was spewing out of Edwards. An apt description of Edwards. He had hoped that with the formation of the United Earth Government, both sides of the Global Civil War serving together after that war was over, and meeting the threat that the "Visitor" portend could reform Edwards and purge the ugliness that Edwards displayed during the Global Civil War. Obviously, none of them worked.

Once Edwards stopped vomiting, Hayes continued his tirade. "You were extremely lucky, Edwards, that I slipped and didn't burn your heart out like I wanted to. As it stands, I'll leave you like you are now. Half of your face burned off and missing an eye. You are now one ugly bastard." Putting his right foot onto Edwards's body, pushing back a surge of disgust at having to touch Edwards again, he turned the ex-pilot onto his back. Looking down he told Edwards, "For what's left of your life, which means not too long now, you're going to be a one eye monster. Your ugly face will reflect what you are on the inside. A coward, a liar, and a lousy brown-noser." Those were the last words that Admiral Hayes spoke to Colonel Edwards as he turned towards the exit door and rushed down towards the auxiliary weapons station.

Edwards, lying in a pool of vomit and blood, felt the sting of Hayes's accusations. Because, deep down in his soul, he knew that Hayes described him perfectly. He moaned out loud, the pain was still unbearable. Even though he wanted to give in to the pain and seek the blissful oblivion of unconsciousness, Edwards knew that would be a fatal mistake. Alaska Base was going to be destroyed, if not by the Zentraedi, then by all the cascading failures of the Grand Cannon's components.

Turning over, and through sheer force of hate at everyone and everything that opposed him, Edwards got onto his knees, then grabbing a nearby console, pulled himself up to stand on his two feet. Dizziness almost overwhelmed him but the urge to survive helped him get through it. After finding his bearings, he staggered over to a wall which held a first aid kit. Tearing it open, he reached inside to grab an auto-injector and an ampoule of morphine. After two misses, going through his impressive command of curses, he managed to insert the morphine ampoule into the auto-injector. Next, he quickly pointed the tip of the auto-injector towards his left thigh and, with a swift force, stabbed down. Edwards felt the spring loaded needle pierce his clothing and into his flesh. The ampoule emptied quickly. Seeing the empty ampoule, he pulled out the auto-injector and let it drop.

Edwards wanted to wait for the morphine to take effect but he had to move. He didn't know when this base was going to explode and he didn't want to stay around to find out. He exited the control room.

"Can anyone hear me? This is Lisa Hayes. Please talk to me," Lisa pleaded. She was getting panicky over the realization that she might be the only survivor of Alaska Base. She went through the remaining security cameras to see if anyone were up and about. Even a wounded person thrashing about would've given some small comfort that she wasn't alone. But for the rest of her life, of which only Rick and their closest friends, Max and Miriya Sterling, would ever know, she would see bodies and parts of bodies strewned all over Alaska Base. There was no one alive. "Please, I don't want to be the only one alive!" she cried out loud.

Even the ground-to-space communications channels, of which all were working, were silent. She feared that all of Earth's defenders, including the SDF-1, were dead up there. Later, after being debriefed and going over the after-action reports did she realize that Dolza's bombardment of Earth created such a high ionization effect that no signal could penetrate this interference. That's why the crew of the SDF-1 couldn't hear her nor she them.

Finally, it became too much for her to bear. She collapsed onto her chair and put her head down on top of the console and began to cry. The tears came freely.

Admiral Hayes finally got to the auxiliary weapons station. It wasn't easy with collapsed bulkheads blocking off various access corridors, live electrical cables dangling like lethal tentacles throwing off sparks which caused him to detour several times, and everywhere bodies lying about. He tried not to think about that fearing that it would remind him of Lisa.

Now, he stood in front of the console that contained the firing trigger for the Grand Cannon. He dragged the dead female rating away from the console and gently laid her down on the floor. Morbidly, he wondered if her family was dead by now. Not many would have survived the Rain of Death that those aliens were bombarding Earth with. No, he concluded, none would have survived it.

Banishing those thoughts aside, he got down to business. Hayes made sure that the console was still working. It was. Next, he checked the status of the Grand Cannon. Power was still being fed to it. The capacitors were ninety nine percent recharged. Enough for a fire mission, Hayes concluded.

Looking up from the console, the Admiral looked at the radar and lidar situation screens that were still feeding tracking information in spite of the pounding Alaska Base received. He frowned. The radar was locking on to alien ships then losing them. Hayes quickly decided to ignore the radar tracking and concentrated instead on the lidar.

Using the lidar tracking data, Hayes chose the largest concentration of alien ships that the Grand Cannon can reach. Without hesitation, he pressed the firing button. He knew he just ended his life. There were two consolations for dying in the cause of defending humanity against the alien scum. The first was that he was going to be together with his wife and daughter away from this hell. And, secondly, he was to going to wipe out a large number of alien invaders.

Connections between circuits were successfully made. Unbeknownst to Hayes, others failed to connect. What the Admiral had hoped for: killing a lot of Zentraedis didn't happen. The Grand Cannon fizzled. There was just too much damage for it to fire effectively. The capacitors did release their charge, but not into the Grand Cannon and on to space but into Alaska Base.

The feedback from the attempted firing of the Grand Cannon came into the auxiliary weapons station just as Hayes told Lisa. He was braced for it. Mercifully, the feedback created such a powerful explosion that the Admiral never felt any pain and his death was quick.

Rick was rocked back and forth as his Veritech finally hit the atmosphere. He kept a very close eye on the outside temperature gauge. He was still worried about keeping the belly of the fighter between him and the heat of re-entry. His lips twisted as he thought of how he survived everything thrown at him so far only to be burned up as he attempted to land on his homeworld.

_So far, so good._ Rick observed. All instruments indicators were at the positions they were supposed to be, he had reasonable control of his damaged fighter, and so far the bolts that Dolza's fleet were firing down onto Earth were missing him.

Rick looked up into space but couldn't see anything due to the red hot glow of plasma as he continued to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere. This problem ended as soon as he finally entered the atmosphere.

Even with all of the attention that he devoted to getting his Skull One under control, a part of him noticed that the plasma bolts coming from Dolza's fleet were tapering off.

He fought back sobs that threatened to burst forth as he horribly realized that it might have meant that Dolza's fleet had successfully completed their mission of obliterating all life on Earth. Violently shaking his head, as a dog would shake its body to shed water, he got rid of that thought as Rick desperately clung to the other conclusion that came to him. Captain Gloval and Breetai somehow miraculously defeated Dolza and his Grand Fleet in spite of all the odds stacked against them. He embraced that thought as he finally entered Earth's atmosphere.

Rick set his transceiver to maximum gain and spoke into every emergency channel that the SDF-1 loaded into his fighter's main computer. "Anybody, this is Lt. Rick Hunter of the SDF-1. Can anyone hear me?" Unconsciously or, perhaps something much deeper, he was flying in the general direction of Alaska Base.

Shock. Disbelief. Hallucination? Did he mean that much to her? So much so that she conjured his voice into her headset? But she still kept hearing his voice. Trembling, she pressed her microphone and spoke, "This is Alaska Base. Rick Hunter, is that you?" She silently prayed that he was real and alive.

"This is Alaska Base. Rick Hunter, is that you?" He must be hearing things. Rick wondered if he was suffering from hypoxia. He rapidly checked his oxygen meter. In the green.

Rick felt excitement coursing throughout his body. _Lisa's alive!_ Please let her be real. Afraid that he was delusional, he hesitatingly replied, "Lisa, this is Rick. Where are you?"

He was floating in a morphine haze. Edwards vaguely recalled that he injected his third or, was it his fifth, ampoule of painkilling morphine. He harshly reminded himself to keep track of how much drug he was injecting or he might die of an overdose.

He'll be damned if he was going to die down here. Admiral Hayes' truths were still ringing in his ears. So what? he argued with himself. I'll do anything to look out for number one. Me. I'm a survivor. I survived one war. I'll live through this one, too.

Colonel Edwards was coming back from the nearest escape pods which he discovered, to his fury, were destroyed. He was panicking. He didn't know how much time he had left before the entire base explodes. He had to go to another section to see if those escape pods escaped damage.

As he was about to pass a sub-communications room, he heard voices coming from some of the speakers. Elation surged through him. He can contact them and send down help to get him out of this hellhole before it explodes. His elation faded as he heard the voices. One of them he recognized and hated instantly. The other he didn't know or cared about.

"Lisa, this is Rick. Where are you?" he heard over the speakers. Edwards looked at the consoles to see if he can get some visuals. He roughly shoved off a dead signal officer from his chair and sat down. He typed in a command to the computer to trace the signal. Very quickly, it told him where that brat of Hayes was located. It also told him that a security camera was still functional in the communications room that Lisa Hayes was in.

Edwards quickly ordered the computer to send the visual signal to the screen in front of him. There she was. Commander Lisa Hayes. The waterwalker as he derisively described her behind her and her father's back. First in her class at the military academy, the youngest First Officer in RDF history, Captain Gloval's right-hand man, or in this case, right-hand woman.

"You're not so special now, are you, Commander?" he scornfully told Lisa's image on the screen. He set aside the anger and hate he felt for Donald Hayes, and by extension, to his daughter, for now, while he attempted to reach her. He continued to eavesdrop on what they were saying.

"Rick, thank goodness you're alive!" Lisa shouted into the mike. Her emerald eyes were tearing up again but only this time it was tears of joy. "Rick, are you alright? Why aren't you up there fighting Dolza's fleet?" confusion evident in her tone.

"I took a hit from a battlepod and it damaged Skull One. It knocked me out briefly but I'm alright and I managed to get my fighter under control. What's your location, Lisa? I'm coming to rescue you," he told her. Looking down at the battle scarred landscape; he was horrified at the utter devastation that Dolza's fleet inflicted on Earth.

Lisa was overjoyed at hearing Rick's commanding voice. He was coming to rescue her! "I'm activating my locater beacon," she informed him while pressing the button activating the beacon.

"Do you have the signal?" Lisa anxiously spoke into her headset mike. She felt the base was increasing its shaking and the number of explosions was increasing.

Rick impatiently waited for the locater beacon to show up on his heads-up display. Just looking at his HUD told him that he was several miles out and rapidly approaching the perimeter of Alaska Base. "Lisa, I got your signal!" Rick shouted out excitedly as he banked Skull One to home in on the blinking blip. He swiftly put the schematics of the area where the beacon was located onto his HUD. "Meet me by the tunnel's hatch, Lisa!" he ordered.

"I'm on my way!" Lisa took off her headset, grabbed her personal communicator, and ran towards the tunnel's hatch.

Edwards also heard Rick's announcement. He tried again to get in contact with Hayes, and failing that, Hunter. "Hayes, I can receive you at this station. Can you hear me? Answer me, damn you!" he snarled. He looked over his shoulder to make sure that the doors were still open and not blocked by falling debris. He wasn't sure how much longer he can stay where he was before leaving to try another section and its escape pods.

"Lisa, I got your signal!" Edwards was looking at the screen as he heard Hunter's voice as Rick informed Lisa of this new development. He saw Hayes leaned forward and said to herself, "Come to me, Rick." Her eyes were shiny with tears, but he noted that there was also something else there. _Well, what do we have here? _A cynical smile crossed his mutilated face. He ignored the pain that the smile caused him. Two lovebirds coming together into each other's arms.

"I can see the entrance to the Grand Cannon, Lisa. When I cut a hole in the tunnel's hatch, come out and meet me." Rick switched his Veritech to Guardian mode and flew down the shaft of the Grand Cannon. He was intently studying the schematics to the Grand Cannon on his HUD as well as making sure that his VT wouldn't strike any projections that were sticking out from the walls of the Grand Cannon. He also made sure to periodically check on the radiation counter. Rick didn't know what kind of energies was present or hot it was down here.

Almost there, Rick thought, tamping down the excitement that was building inside him. He didn't want to screw the pooch this close to Lisa. He saw the blip coming level to his symbol on the HUD. There! He was looking into the mouth of the tunnel. Miraculously, he had an unobstructed access all the way to the hatch at the end of this tunnel.

Shoving his HOTAS forward, he felt himself pushed back by the acceleration into his ejection seat. He can see the closed emergency hatch growing bigger as he got closer to her. "Lisa, I'm

almost at the hatch! Get ready to move when I tell you to!" he shouted into the mike. In his urgency, he forgot that Lisa had already left her station and was waiting for him by the hatch.

"I'm already by the hatch, Rick. Hurry!" Lisa begged as she can feel that the base was getting ready to explode.

"Hayes, Hunter, this is Colonel Edwards! Wait for me, don't leave me down here!" Edwards screamed into his headset. Looking at the screen and listening to the speakers for any response, he realized that those two fair-haired officers were oblivious to him.

The base was shaking and rumbling around him. Pieces of the ceiling were starting to collapse. Smoke and dust was building up causing his eyes to tear up and to cough from smoke inhalation.

Rick stopped his VT directly in front of the tunnel's hatch. Like Lisa and Edwards, he realized that time was almost up. He quickly discarded the idea of cutting a Guardian size hole in the hatch. It would've taken too long.

Reaching the decision to cut a smaller hole large enough for Lisa to use, he immediately activated the switch to lower down the quad-laser mount from the VT's belly and had all four lasers focused on the hatch. Then he fired. "Lisa, stand back from the hatch. I'm cutting a hole for you!" he commanded to her.

Lisa could see and feel the fiery red-hot glow as the lasers quickly melted through the armored hatch. She stood against the wall to avoid getting inadvertently sliced in half by any of the laser beams. She raised her communicator to her mouth and spoke into it. "I'm ready to move, Rick. I can see the outline of the hole!"

Rick didn't reply so focus was he on getting the hole cut. Finally, the line of the laser beams reached the start point. Rick hurriedly let go of the laser turret joystick and retracted the turret back into the fuselage. The cut section fell backwards with a loud clang and smoke poured out of the opening.

He raised the cockpit canopy and was immediately assaulted by the sight and sound of a dying base. Someone's figure was outlined in the smoke. "Lisa!" Rick screamed. He unbuckled his seat harness and stood up on his ejector seat. "Lisa!" he shouted again.

Lisa saw the cut section of the hatch fall backward. It made a loud bang when it landed on the floor. She didn't hesitate. She hurriedly moved to the hole and carefully avoiding the still hot edges, stepped over to the other side where Rick was.

He gave in to his fear and rage. Edwards tore off his headset and hurled it into the screen. He was screaming epithets in several languages at Rick and Lisa for what he irrationally believed was their abandoning him to die here.

The screen showed Lisa stepping out of the smoke and running towards Rick in his Skull One. Edwards watched as Rick grabbed Lisa and pulled her into the cockpit, closed the canopy, and flew the fighter backwards as fast as possible. Grudgingly, Edwards noted the expert flying skills Hunter displayed in getting out of there.

A cold hatred settled over him as his survival instincts settled over him. He vowed vengeance on Hunter for rescuing his girlfriend and not him and on Lisa Hayes for also abandoning him as well as being the daughter of Admiral Donald Hayes. He looked for ward to the day when he would have her all alone so he can demonstrate his ideas of a makeover on her. The parody of a smile on his ruined face would've chilled any observer who saw it.

"You will regret this day. Both of you. I will have my revenge." he vowed to the empty screen. He stalked out of the room and went to find a functioning escape pod.

Rick saw the figure step out of the smoke. It was Lisa and she was running towards him. A big smile was plastered on her face and her arms were outstretched. He had his arms outstretched as well. A wave of relief and happiness washed over him. Lisa was alive and well!

He hauled her up and gave him a quick bear hug. "Oh, Rick, you came just like said" he heard her tearfully said. "Lisa, I would never let anything happen to you" he honestly told her as he settled into his seat. She was sitting in his lap. This would make flying tricky but Rick had the confidence, some would say cockiness, of an expert pilot to make the VT do whatever he wanted it to do.

After making sure Lisa was ready, he lowered the canopy and had Skull One fly backwards while still in Guardian mode until they reached the end of the tunnel. "Hang on, Lisa." Then, with all the thrust that the Veritech fighter's engines could safely produced, Rick gunned his fighter straight up the shaft of the Grand Cannon, all the while keeping an eye on any debris that might prevent them from getting out of Alaska Base alive.

Lisa was experiencing a mixture of emotions as she sat in Rick's lap and her arms wrapped around his neck. Relief at being rescued by someone she…cared for. She shied away from using the other word that was more truthful about her feelings towards Rick. She wasn't ready to admit those feelings to Rick, much less to herself. Other feelings were clamoring for her attention including guilt at surviving the destruction of Alaska Base, sadness and loneliness at losing her father, the last living relative in her family.

"Lisa, I can see the end of the Grand Cannon! We're going to make it!" Rick exulted. That got her attention and made her forget, at least temporarily, the emotional storm she was experiencing.

"I see it too, Rick. We are going to make it!" She looked at him and they shared a smile and a look that spoke volumes. Then, finally, the fighter erupted out of the mouth of the Grand Cannon still flying straight up. Rick changed trajectory and had them flying away from Alaska Base as fast as the damaged fighter can give him.

As soon as they flew past the remnants of Alaska Base's perimeter fence, Rick scouted for a safe place to land. "Lisa, I'm going to find a place to land. Keep an eye on the radiation detector for me, will you?" he inquired as he was looking out the cockpit windscreen for a relatively smooth spot to land the fighter.

"Um, hmm," Lisa replied in answer to Rick's question. "I'll let you know if it's hot." She focused on the radiation detector as he continued flying.

With several more miles from Alaska Base and just minutes after the rescue, though both Lisa and Rick would both swear that it felt like hours, they finally found a safe and radiation free patch of ground.

Rick landed Skull One facing Alaska Base. He wanted to see the base when it blew up. He popped the canopy open and both he and Lisa sat on the edges of the cockpit facing each other as well as looking back at the dying base.

"Anytime now, Rick," Lisa answered his question before he can even uttered it. He couldn't figure out how she can read his mind all the time. It was eerie.

"Lisa, how do you know what I was going to..." Rick didn't finish his question as Alaska Base finally exploded. They shielded their eyes and watched in silence. The mushroom cloud going up was a mute testament to the horrors and suffering of war. Both also wondered if it was a symbolic tombstone over the graveyard of humanity that was Earth.

"Do you think we're the only ones left," Rick wondered aloud as he looked at Lisa. He was emotionally drained after all the events that he went through in the last, glancing down at his chronometer, day. Now, he had to consider the very real possibility that he and Lisa were the last humans alive.

"I don't know, Rick. But if it is, than I don't mind it since you're here," Lisa quietly stated.

A silence settled between them as both Rick and Lisa were trying to sort out their feelings towards each other and wondering how to verbalize them. As they both worked up their courage to say what they honestly felt towards each other, an immense shadow appeared above them.

Then Rick's radio picked up Minmei's voice singing "My Boyfriend's a Pilot".

They both stood and looked up. _It was the SDF-1!_ Battered, battle-scarred, but victorious it was slowly descending not far from where Rick and Lisa were. Its landing zone was an empty lakebed that one of Dolza's deathbolts created during the Rain of Death.

Amid a backwash of dust, dirt, and assorted debris the SDF-1, the guardian of humanity, had arrived back home. Its epic odyssey was finally over.

"They made it!" Rick and Lisa both shouted towards each other. Gloval, Claudia, Max and Miriya, the Bridge Bunnies all of them and everyone else survived. Happiness at not being the last humans on Earth, joy that all their friends were still alive, and exhilaration that they won against all odds surge through their hearts. They hugged and cried and cried and hugged for what seem like ages before they gradually released each other.

"Shall we report back to the SDF-1, Commander Hayes?" Rick was smiling at her.

"Yes, Lt. Hunter, let's go home," Lisa radiantly replied back.

Rick settled back into his pilot's seat and as Lisa settled into his lap he powered up the engines. He checked his radiation detector and saw that the local area wasn't radioactive so he decided to leave the canopy up rather than close it.

As he lifted Skull One up and moving towards SDF-1, he felt Lisa placed her right hand on top of his left hand which was on the throttles while she placed her left arm on his chest and her head rested on his right shoulder. He gave her a huge grin as they flew on towards home, their friends, and a rendezvous with destiny.


End file.
